Joseph Black, (born April 16, 1728, Bordeaux, France—died Nov. 10, 1799, Edinburgh, Scot.), British chemist and physicist best known for the rediscovery of “fixed air” (carbon dioxide), the concept of latent heat, and the discovery of the bicarbonates (such as bicarbonate of soda). Black lived and worked within the context of the Scottish Enlightenment, a remarkable flourishing of intellectual life in Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Aberdeen during the latter half of the 18th century. He could count the philosopher David Hume, economist Adam Smith, and geologist James Hutton among his friends.

Education

Black was the son of expatriate Ulster merchant John Black and his Aberdeen-born wife, Margaret Gordon. At age 12 Black was sent to school in Belfast, and a few years later he moved to the University of Glasgow to study art. Black’s father later required him to choose a course of study leading to a profession. Because he chose medicine, Black came under the influence of an innovative teacher of chemistry, William Cullen, and, unusual for a young student, he started to conduct chemical experiments in his professor’s laboratory. Black did not graduate in medicine at Glasgow because he was attracted to the University of Edinburgh, where the medical school enjoyed more prestige. In order to graduate, students had to prepare a thesis. Black was particularly assiduous (many students did not take their work seriously), and he conducted a series of experiments on the chemical properties of an alkali—in particular, magnesia alba, now known as magnesium carbonate. The work had to have a medical connection, so Black described the application of this substance to minor digestive disorders. His medical degree was awarded in 1754.

The research on the nature of alkalinity, which Black conducted for his thesis, laid the basis for the most important paper of his career, “Experiments upon Magnesia Alba, Quicklime, and Some Other Alcaline Substances,” given to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1755. The earlier series of experiments for his thesis were conducted on magnesium salt and, for the first time, consisted of a planned cyclic series of quantitative experiments in which a balance was used at all stages. He found that with acids, magnesia alba behaved in a similar way to chalk (calcium carbonate), giving off a gas. He then heated a sample of the starting compound and found that the product, magnesia usta (now known as magnesium oxide), like quicklime (calcium oxide), did not effervesce with acids. Unlike quicklime, however, it was not caustic or soluble in water. Black hypothesized that the weight lost during heating was due to the gas generated. He then added a solution of potash (potassium carbonate) to the magnesia usta and showed that the product weighed the same as his original sample of magnesia alba. The difference between the alba and usta was therefore the gas, which Black called “fixed air.” It could be introduced to the latter to re-create the former by means of the potash.

Black broadened his experiments and took his conclusions to a higher stage in his 1756 paper to the Philosophical Society. He concentrated on calcium rather than magnesium salts, showing that, when chalk is heated strongly to quicklime, a gas is given off, and he concluded that this gas derives from the chalk and not from the fire in the furnace; this had been a point of contention among Edinburgh professors. The gas could be replaced by adding potash solution to the quicklime, which demonstrated that the fixed air is contained in the alkali. Black then showed that the gas is not a version of atmospheric air. He was thus the first chemist to show that gases could be chemical substances in themselves and not, as had been thought beforehand, atmospheric air in different states of purity. After Black’s seminal experiments, various other gases were chemically characterized in the second half of the 18th century, including oxygen (which he called dephlogisticated air) by the English clergyman and scientist Joseph Priestley, nitrogen by Daniel Rutherford (a pupil of Black), and hydrogen by the English physicist and chemist Henry Cavendish.

Heat research

Black spent a couple of years following graduation working as a physician. In 1756 Cullen was appointed to the chemistry chair in Edinburgh, and Black filled the vacancy created in Glasgow, becoming professor of anatomy and lecturer in chemistry. Cullen had been particularly interested in the lowering of temperature that results from the evaporation of liquids. Black turned his attention to heat phenomena too, asking such questions as: Why does water not boil away suddenly when the temperature reaches boiling point? Why does ice not suddenly melt when the temperature exceeds the freezing point?

Black distinguished between the quantity of heat in a body and its intensity, or temperature, realizing that thermometers can be used to determine the quantity of heat if temperature is measured over a period of time while the body is heated or cooled. He took two similar glass flasks, pouring the same quantity of water into both and placing them in a freezing mixture. In one he had added a little alcohol to prevent freezing. They were then removed from the bath, one frozen and the other liquid, though at the same temperature. They were allowed to warm up naturally. The temperature of the water plus alcohol warmed up several degrees, while the ice remained at its freezing point. As the flasks had to be absorbing heat at the same rate, Black showed that the heat absorbed by the ice in 10 hours would have raised the temperature of the same quantity of water by 78 °C (140 °F). This was the latent heat of fusion of water. The experiments were extended to measure the latent heat of vaporization of water.

Industrial consultant

By the mid-1760s, powerful moves were afoot for Black to return to Edinburgh. Cullen was moved to a different chair of medicine to allow his former pupil to become professor of chemistry in 1766. At this point in his career, a change came over Black’s approach to chemistry. Instead of continuing to pursue fundamental concepts, Black turned his attention almost entirely to teaching and to advising landowners and entrepreneurs how chemical-based industries in Scotland (and sometimes farther afield) could be developed. There is no doubt that some felt that he was not treating his responsibility as an academic chemist seriously enough. Black certainly seems to have had an aversion to publishing his research; for example, he wrote nothing on his theories of heat for publication. His work became well known because of the large number of students (sometimes in excess of 300) who registered for his annual course of lectures and diffused his concepts throughout Great Britain, Europe, and the United States. Some of his work was published by others.

Scotland was rapidly industrializing, from a low base, in the 18th century. Some credit for this is due to the Board of Trustees for Manufactures in Scotland. Following the Act of Union of 1707, which united the English and Scottish parliaments, an annual sum of money was set aside to encourage industrial development. Initially, no mechanism was established for distribution of funds, but in 1727 a board of trustees was set up, and in the first year £6,000 was made available for the herring, linen, and wool industries. Later, Black and his colleagues at the University of Edinburgh were closely involved in judging proposals made to the board. In particular, they judged proposals for the development of schemes to improve the bleaching of linen.

Linen was a major and expanding commodity in Scotland and Ireland. A crisis had arisen because the agent used in bleaching, potash made from wood ashes, had risen in price by 50 percent between 1750 and 1770 in response to a timber shortage. The usual alternative, sour milk, took weeks longer to take effect. Black’s university colleague Francis Home suggested that, instead of sour milk, dilute sulfuric acid be used. Black’s contribution was to increase the bleaching power of potash by adding lime to it. This resulted in Black’s only substantial publication concerning an industrial process, “An Explanation of the Effect of Lime upon Alkaline Salts,” which was published in Home’s Experiments on Bleaching (1771). Another approach to the bleaching problem was to look for a cheaper way of making potash. Cullen turned his mind to this and was rewarded by the board for his proposal to burn conifers in the remoter parts of the Scottish Highlands, and he speculated on whether ferns or seaweed would be an economically favourable source of the alkali. Black became interested and analyzed burned kelp (a form of seaweed) obtained from different sources on the Scottish coast. He demonstrated that the alkali yield could vary significantly from place to place.

Black’s skill at judging the viability of new proposals for industrial processes became renowned. After he had masterfully judged the financial benefits for establishing a tar works, Sir John Dalrymple, solicitor to the Board of Excise, described Black as “the best judge, perhaps in Europe, of the merit of such inventions.” Black was certainly in demand for his opinions, being consulted by a considerable number of industrialists on an extraordinarily broad range of topics. In the surviving correspondence these include sugar refining, alkali production, bleaching, ceramics glazing, dyeing, brewing, metal corrosion, salt extraction, glass making, mineral composition, water analysis, vinegar manufacture, and furnace construction. In addition, his views were sought on various agricultural matters.

Later years

There are relatively few clues to Black’s social life and relationships. He appears to have been convivial, being a member of the Poker and Oyster clubs for dining with his male friends. He entertained influential visitors to Edinburgh in his later years, such as the American diplomat Benjamin Franklin. He never married, though he enjoyed the company of Bluestocking women. He sometimes sang at social gatherings; he could play the flute; and he drew skillfully. His health was never robust, and he was careful with his diet.

Black’s chemistry teaching, in his earlier years, reflected the latest ideas; toward the end of his career, his views started to seem outdated. This was particularly the case when it came to his views on the nature of combustion. The 17th-century phlogiston theory, whereby burning substances emit an invisible, weightless substance called phlogiston, was superseded by the views of the French chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, who proposed his oxygen theory from 1775. Black was reluctant to adopt this theory, though his pupils strongly argued its case. Black finally corresponded with Lavoisier in 1790 and bowed to the inevitable. From 1795 Black gave up nearly all of his teaching, though he retained his title. Black died a celebrated death, being found by his servant with a cup of milk balanced between his knees, not a drop having been spilled. It was commented upon that this was entirely in line with the ordered nature of his life and, further, that it reflected the perfection of his experimental procedures.

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